Thinking of the differences between the situation in the U.S. and western/central Europe (which I'm somewhat familiar with):
Cellular, and anything else to do with physical infrastructure, might be the few cases in technology where the size of U.S. market works against creating value for the consumer. In most everything else, having access to a common market of ~300 million people is awesome; it's not so awesome when you have to be able to service a substantial amount of them to get critical mass.
Wondering: in Canada, we have upstart cellular operators competing by offering lower prices for service covering only the largest urban areas of the country. So if you're in Toronto, Vancouver, and Calgary (and a couple of other places), you have more choice, in Flin Flon not so much. Anything like that in the U.S.?
Mostly, we have ATT, VZW, TMO, and Sprint duking it out over most of the customers, while second tier carriers (regional, usually) and MVNOs clean up the scraps. Not too many are doing much of note in terms of disrupting, although there are a few on the horizon. I think that a lot of it has to do with spectrum - there just isn't enough for upstarts, so they end up riding on the main networks of the big 4, or reselling them as an MVNO.
I really wouldn't hold up the Canadian mobile industry as better than the US. It's one of the few markets actually worse than the US (data, call charges, etc.).
The US has regional or urban carriers; often they're MVNO, or have some local infrastructure and use another big carrier for other areas.
They're mainly confined to the low end/poor/no credit market. Until recently, they barely had featurephones. Probably the big ones are Virgin Mobile, Boost Mobile, and MetroPCS.
> I really wouldn't hold up the Canadian mobile industry as better than the US. It's one of the few markets actually worse than the US (data, call charges, etc.).
That's what I keep on hearing. But I also keep on hearing about $60, $100 smartphone bills in the U.S., and the last time I paid that much was on a shitty contract with Rogers in 2010. When I signed that contract in early 2009, there were no better options - I had to sign up for a year if I wanted Blackberry push email, and it didn't matter that I had my own phone (carrier subsidy $0).
Now I pay $29 for unlimited local voice, unlimited text, unlimited-with-an-asterisk data, contract-free. My starting costs were a used $200 Nexus One and a $25 SIM card (much too much, but whatever). My carrier right now has a promotion with unlimited Canada/U.S. voice for $40 and unlimited text/data. The catch is that I would pay extra for service in the boonies, but I don't need service in the boonies. At the very least, I have the choice; does your average Android owner in the Bay Area or in Seattle, if so, what are the choices?
Cellular, and anything else to do with physical infrastructure, might be the few cases in technology where the size of U.S. market works against creating value for the consumer. In most everything else, having access to a common market of ~300 million people is awesome; it's not so awesome when you have to be able to service a substantial amount of them to get critical mass.
Wondering: in Canada, we have upstart cellular operators competing by offering lower prices for service covering only the largest urban areas of the country. So if you're in Toronto, Vancouver, and Calgary (and a couple of other places), you have more choice, in Flin Flon not so much. Anything like that in the U.S.?